2009 EthicMark® Winner

EthicMark 2009 Awards

The World Business Academy has announced the winners of the 2009 EthicMark® Awards. The EthicMark® Award recognizes outstanding marketing, advertising, and public relations campaigns and communications that uplift the human spirit and society.

Pantene, a division of Proctor & Gamble, won in the for-profit category for its ad, “Chrysalis” (Thailand). CARE won in the not-for-profit category for its ad, “I Am Powerful” (USA), about a natural resource that is greatly overlooked and could hold the key to improving our planet. The Academy presented the Awards last week at the Business as an Agent of World Betterment (BAWB) 2009 Global Forum attended by about 600 people.

The presentation of the Awards at the opening night reception included speeches by the Mayor of Cleveland; the President of Case Western Reserve University; Academy Fellow David Cooperrider, Founder of BAWB; Gunter Pauli, Head of the Zero Emission Research Initiative; and Academy President Rinaldo Brutoco. Then Academy Fellow Ron Nahser and Academy Board Member Tim O’Connor took the stage, showed the five finalists videos in each category, and announced the winners. It was a special evening.

The Global Forum 2009 has created a social network site with the EthicMark® Awards videos and other Forum presentations.

This year, the EthicMark® Judges Panel received several dozen nominations from six countries, which the Board narrowed down to a group of five finalists each in the for-profit and not-for-profit categories. An international jury of marketing, advertising, media and academia professionals selected the winners.

The other finalists in the for-profit category, in alphabetical order, were:

Co-operative Bank of the United Kingdom’s “Good With Money” ad, highlighting the bank’s ethical policy

Dentyne’s “Relationships” ad, encouraging us to get off the computer and interact in person with each other

During the Awards ceremony, Tim O’Connor explained the physical 2009 Award: “It is titled ‘Circle Dance’ and is carved by Fair Trade members of the Undugu Society of Kenya, out of Kisii stone which comes from only that part of the world. Our choice of ‘Circle Dance’ recognizes the circle of life of which we are all a part. As John Donne said, ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ And so ‘Circle Dance’ also points out to the marketing and communications community that we too are a part of this great circle of life—that we need to contribute in positive ways for we ultimately reap what we sow.”